Cereal export prices, particularly of wheat, maize and rice, have increased significantly in late 2007 as compared to the year before. This, combined with increases in oil prices and freight rates, has sharply driven up the cost of imports for food importing countries, putting a heavy financial burden on many low income food deficit countries. Simple calculations of this price change are presented in the tables and figure below.

Figure 1: Southern Africa: 2007/08 cereal (maize, wheat and rice) import bills and changes due to increase in import parity prices of November 2007 versus that of November 2006 (assuming import parity prices in the region similar to that of South Africa)